Never cared much for poetry. I read Mazeppa anyways and I really like it. The tale of a man strapped to a horse who runs with an almost endless energy is great. But I hunted this down for the ”Fragment of a novel” included. It’s cited as the first vampire tale in literature. I’m interested in reading Bram Stoker and Prest’s tales of Varney the Vampire so I figured I’d start at the beginning. But it really is only an unfinished fragment and we only know that it’s about a vampire because the author said so. His publisher apparently printed it, without permission, combined with Mazeppa to pad the volume out. It’s very slight and there’s not much to say, but what’s there is good.

What’s perhaps most fascinating is that Byron wrote this fragment during the same ghost story competition held with Percy and Mary Shelley, out of which Frankenstein also came. History. Get it.

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A bunch of weirdos and their messed up lives intersect on the fringes of Hollywood and everything gets more and more tense until a man goes Lou Ferigno on a little boy’s torso. It was a nice way to end things, especially since this reader wanted to strangle some of the characters himself by that point.

Funny story: I got this book because I read somewhere that it was science fiction. Or at least I thought i had. Obviously it’s not, but the whole time I was reading I kept wondering when someone was going to travel through time or aliens would pop up. Those that “come to California to die” seemed likely candidates for lizard people.

But about three quarters of the way through (okay maybe four fifths), it was clear that no one was going to be losing their cat in a wormhole. That complete misdirection got me to read something I may have never noticed otherwise, and I’m mostly glad for it. Also being such a short book helped.

It reminds me a lot of Camus’ The Stranger. But where Mersault acted on his sociopathic thoughts, Tod Hackett does a much better job of keeping his violent and rapey impulses to himself.

The cock fight scene was truly horrifying and depressing – I didn’t know much about that, and I wish I still didn’t.

This book is probably particularly relevant, and maybe even cathartic, for people living or working in Hollywood. But the basic idea comes across just fine even if you don’t. It’s ultimately an intriguing mix of repulsiveness, curiosity, satire and pointlessness.

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Normally I love detailed exposition of retro-futurist tech and alien environments but I didn’t enjoy it here. It is too mechanical, as the author seems to want to be as accurate as possible so the reader can establish the scene perfectly in their mind, which is going too far. Or maybe my brain has been turned to mush by Burroughs’ Barsoom series and Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber.

While the story itself is interesting, it’s similar to other space fiction of the time – basically they were all a variation on Dances with Wolves in space. It’s the broader themes it illustrates that are really engaging. As other members of GoodReads have noted, the exchange between the main character, his captors and the metaphysical being of Oyarsa is excellent: a comically hilarious and frustratingly accurate discourse on expansionist ideology. This scene is mostly about the application of Darwinism to the conquering of foreign peoples. Perhaps the Nazis or fascism in general were the source of inspiration, given its publication in the late 1930s, but I think it more closely resembles American settlement and expansion.

It’s encouraging that Lewis finds contempt for those that justify colonization under the guise of twisted Darwinism and Manifest-Destiny-like ideals. It’s equally encouraging to find that Lewis accepts the real theory of evolution in general. In fact it may be surprising to some how matter-of-factly he accepts it.

One thing I really appreciated was Lewis’ focus on language throughout, being a philologist himself. We learn some basic Malacandrian along with the protagonist, and it’s wonderfully immersive – the author even uses racial accents to distinguish between characters. It reminded me of the way Stephen King uses onomatopoeia, nicknames and rhymes throughout the Dark Tower series. I find this stuff key to making rich experiences.

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I’m reviewing the whole series since it doesn’t seem to make sense and review each of the 4 individual chapters.

The art in this series is fantastic, like Charles Burns crossed with some Moebius but with it’s own organic style.

Despite its short length, the characters and plot are compelling, relying on recognizable archetypes and classic themes without coming off as boring or cliché. I wish it didn’t end already and hope that Ward gets a chance to revisit the series someday (maybe following Turner after the final events).

Watch this Malachi fellow, we’ll probably be seeing some big stuff from him.

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A satisfying and touching finish, despite its uneven start. This last chapter was the best, being a final adventure filled with wonderfully surreal encounters and phenomena.

Some details were probably inspired or borrowed from better-known predecessors. But like King did with The Dark Tower, they are woven together to create a new entity, unique in its own right. And Zelazny’s epic must have provided things that became the basis for many of the principles at work in Roland Deschain’s universe.

I especially enjoyed the minor confrontation with the cannibalistic little people, which seemed deliberately borrowed – and twisted – from Swift. The quote above is another bonus, a Lovecraftian description of the titular realm.

“But it has far greater depth than originally conceded by critics and readers who dismissed it as lacking substance.”

This series is deceptively clever. It is full of allusions to other literature, historical events and figures. Zelazny was having fun writing this, but he was also teasing and engaging the reader in a multifaceted discussion on the nature of identity, without dragging the plotting down.

The July edition of the New York Review of Science Fiction has an amazing essay that examines all of the brief, cryptic references and allusions. This bit of fantasy is more than just a minor sword and sorcery tale crossed with some science fiction. If you’ve finished this series (the first five), I highly recommend their article, available here